


Broken

by goldenmeme



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Broken Bones, Everyone is 8 years old, Gen, Sides age the same as Thomas, baby sides
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26822926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenmeme/pseuds/goldenmeme
Summary: A little extra to go with chapter 6 of my WIP, A Mask of Your Own Face, but can be read alone.8-year-old Thomas breaks his arm.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	Broken

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for graphic description of a badly broken bone, and Remus-typical violent body horror musings.
> 
> I'm not super familiar with kids, so please forgive me if the kid voices are a little off.

“What do you think it is?”

“I don’t care.”

“What if it’s Thomas’s real birth certificate that Ruth is hiding because he’s secretly adopted?”

Virgil frowned. Maybe he did care a little. He was sitting on the kitchen counter, heels knocking against the cabinet below him, thumbnail between his teeth. Remus was pacing on top of the island counter between the kitchen and the dining room, getting dirty boot prints on the mail.

Thomas didn’t know Remus and Virgil were there, but their conversation was playing somewhere in the back of his head, outside of conscious thought. He was staring up at the little corner of the important-looking yellow envelope peaking over the edge of the tallest cabinet in the entire kitchen. The envelope hadn’t been there the day before.

His mom typically put things she wanted to keep the kids out of up there—Halloween candy, birthday presents, cookies. The good stuff. So, what could be in that envelope that she would want to keep away from him?

Remus said, “What if it’s boarding school paperwork and they’re sending him away to Timbuktu to get gored by wild… what kind of wild animals live in Timbuktu?”

“How did you jump from boarding school directly to ‘gored by wild animals’?”

“Hey, remember when Tiffany Millner got hit by a car and school sent that letter out so parents would tell their kids about how their classmate is dead now? Maybe somebody else at school died. Maybe it was one of Thomas’s friends.”

Virgil bit through his thumbnail. He took it out of his mouth to pick at the ragged edge with his fingers instead of his teeth. “It’s probably just taxes. Or… mortgages or something. Boring adult stuff.” He didn’t sound very sure about that.

“Why would Ruth put something he wouldn’t read anyway up there? Come on, whatever it is, you know it has to be good. Plus, he’s _finally_ tall enough to reach it if he stands on the counter. It’s not even a big deal.”

“But it’s _dangerous_.”

“Thomas eats danger for breakfast! Come _onnnn_ , _Virgil_ , nothing will happen. He’ll just hop up and right back down.” His voice went high and wheedling. “Just a little hop. Hop! _Hop hop!_ ”

“Oh my god, fine! But just like… really fast. He has to get right back down, no messing around up there.”

“ _Yessssss_ ,” Remus hissed as Thomas finally made his decision and approached the cabinets.

Thomas planted his hands on the counter, planning to hop up into a kneel. In his mind it would be a graceful move, like a big cat bounding up a tree. In reality, he tried to hop up but didn’t make it quite high enough, knocking his knee hard against the counter’s sharp edge. It _shouldn’t_ have been a bad fall, but when he landed back on the ground his ankle twisted funny and he flailed, tumbled gracelessly backward, and broke his fall with one franticly slammed down hand.

The crack sounded like a tree branch snapping.

Thomas’s scream was almost as loud as Virgil’s.

Thomas’s dad hurdled into the kitchen half a second later, and everything became a blur of tears and pain and Virgil losing his ever-loving mind while a frantic dad bundled him into the backseat of the car to go to the hospital. Remus watched the entire thing with wide eyes, uncharacteristically silent.

His dad had set him laying across the back seat instead of sitting up, so Virgil had to perch across Thomas’s outstretched legs, hugging his own knees. Remus was crouched in the footwell like some kind of lurking goblin, peeking over the edge of the bench seat with wide, covetous eyes.

Thomas’s dad had thrown a jacket over his torso so he wouldn’t have to look at his mangled arm laying limply across his chest. Remus was staring at the jacket like Patton stared at presents on Christmas morning.

Thomas was starting to eye the jacket, too.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Virgil said.

“ _Do it, do it, do it_ ,” Remus whispered.

Thomas lifted the jacket and peeked underneath.

Thomas’s breath caught, and Remus took the rest of it with an audible gasp.

Virgil covered his own eyes as if that would block the vision out and chanted, “ _Ohgodohgodohgod…_ ”

It didn’t even look like an arm anymore. It looked like a fleshy rubber replica of an arm, curved grotesquely like there wasn’t a bone in there at all. Like a weird toy, or a movie prop. Remus had had no idea parts of people could even look like that in real life.

What else could parts of people look like, if you broke them right?

“ _It’s so gross_ ,” Remus breathed reverently. “Virgil. Virgil, look, Virgil, you can see the bone about to poke through the skin!”

“ _Jesus Christ_ ,” Virgil said, and struggled not to hyperventilate.

“Thomas, poke it.”

“What—no, Thomas, don’t poke it! Why would you want him to do that!”

“I just want to know what it feels like.”

“Pain, moron. Poking the broken arm feels like pain.”

“But like—what _kind_ of pain? How much pain? It doesn’t even hurt right now, I think he could take it. _Oo!_ I bet it would hurt if someone gave him an Indian burn!”

Virgil tried to tune him out, inexorably drawn down his own mental rabbit hole. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into letting him do that. I _knew_ he was going to hurt himself! I’m never letting him do anything ever again. He’s going to have to hide under the covers where it’s safe for the rest of his life. _Oh god_ , that looks so bad. Like _really_ bad. What if they can’t fix it? What if it’s so bad they can’t put him back together and they have to cut it off?”

“Wow, _shut up_ , you’ll make him start crying again. Don’t listen to him, Humpty Dumpty, just think about how freaky your arm looks. Look, it’s all crooked and weird. Everybody at school is going to think you’re a badass! They’ll all want to sign your cast! This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to you.”

“What is _wrong with you?_ ” Virgil snapped.

“What’s wrong with _me?_ What’s wrong with _you?_ It’s like you want him to keep freaking out or something! Let him enjoy his endorphins before they wear off. Right, Thomas? We don’t need him _or_ his useless worry.”

“ _Useless?_ ” Virgil shrilled. “If he’d listened to my _useless worry_ instead of you, he wouldn’t be broken right now!”

Remus sang a carefree little ditty that went, “ _But he iii-is!_ ” The song dropped out of his voice. “Nothing we can do about it now, so might as well have fun with it.”

Virgil could hardly believe what he was hearing. He knew Remus was reckless, but it never would have occurred to him that Remus might actually think Thomas getting hurt was _fun_. Remus had always been kind of weird and intense, but he’d never actually been _scary_. Okay, sometimes he liked to shapeshift into a monster and jump out from behind stuff, but that was just playing around. This… this was different. Thomas was _hurt_ , really badly hurt, and Remus…

“You’re not even sorry.”

Remus swatted a dismissive hand in Virgil’s direction. “What good’s sorry going to do? Thomas. Hey, Thomas! Do you think you could talk the doctors into putting you back together the wrong way around? Maybe you could have a freaky backward hand to scare your brothers with!”

Virgil hugged his knees tighter to his chest and tucked his head down, trying to ignore Remus’s happy, morbid chatter.

There was no way he could ever let Thomas get hurt like that again.


End file.
